Huh, oddly enough I seem to remember that when drug companies were banned from advertising on TV their drugs still sold. So it's not really a necessary evil. Drug companies used to be hugely profitable and didn't have as large marketing budgets.

Interestingly, when cigarette ads were banned from television, it had the perverse effect of increasing the profitability of tobacco companies. It's a sort of tragedy of the commons. Given a product that people already know exists if nobody advertises they all save money and they all get their share of the market for that class of product. If even one advertises, they must all either concede the market to that one or all advertise. If they all advertise, their market shares will remain about the same but no

You're confused about that making any difference at all in a cost-benefit to society way.

To paraphrase you: "You're so stupid. The money doesn't get wasted in this place but in the other one. This is totally ok, you know, because this is a symptom of the way the system is set up, so it must be ok. That said, I'm now going to drag something completely unrelated into the discussion because I'm less interested in finding out what's right than in attacking people who don't share my unquestionable presupposition

Spread that cost to the CDC, NIH, the WHO, various teaching hospitals, universities, pharmacos, foreign medical systems... and yes, research gets cheap per study.

The CDC and WHO don't fund any significant amount of research (and even if they did, the CDC budget is only something like $8 billion, WHO is under a billion), the NIH is supposed to primarily support basic research, not development (not to mention funding those universities you mentioned).

Partly yes, but partly for the opposite reason as well: lots of entities makes it possible to play shell games. There are a lot of biochem profs who have biotech companies on the side, and you might not be surprised that what often happens is that 90% of the research is done in academia on grant funding, and then the last 10% migrates to their startup, which patents the result.

we wouldn't have the industries we have today if they were magically prohibitively expensive.

Unless they were prohibitively expensive except for the profits gained from patents.

The patent system as it exists now might be screwed up and inefficient. But that doesn't defeat the truth that a patent system can shape market behavior in a way that's beneficial to us in the long run.

Bollywood creates 800 movies a year in India [pbs.org], a place the US is exceptionally upset at for it's lax IP laws, that by all politicians should not have nearly the thriving multimedia industry it does.

Given the local differences, it's amazing that they make 10% of the revenue that Hollywood does, while investing only $500K per movie (from the previous PBS report, as contrasted with the average of $100 million for a Hollywood movie [go.com].

Research isn't, research and development is. (research can be pretty expensive, too).

And we do have exactly the industry that we do - that is, everybody chasing blockbusters, the glut of "me-too" drugs, the paltry number of drugs actually making it to market - because it is prohibitively expensive.

The current model seems to be for giant pharma companies to more or less indiscriminately buy up small biotechs, hoping to randomly strike gold with one of them. This does not lead to a very efficient system: I think we are up to $100+ billion spent on research annually ($70B from industry, $30B from the NIH) for a grand total of 26 new drugs approved last year.

They do both. They wouldn't spend the money on ads if ads didn't have a return on investment, and they wouldn't spend money on R&D if R&D didn't have a return on investment.

If they spent less money on advertising, they probably wouldn't spend a dime more on R&D. They'd just pay it out in dividends, or use it to buy up biotechs or whatever. They'd also make a lot less money which would lead to more consolidation which would lead to higher prices due to less competition.

You're falling for the false premise that marketing directly to consumers is a responsible way to market prescription drugs. In a perfect world, doctors would receive independently-produced information about the pros and cons of various new drugs, and then discuss possible courses of treatment with their patients. Even the old system of hiring recent grads to give doctors steak dinners, free pens, and the occasional blowjob is a lot cheaper than buying superbowl ads and puts an allegedly responsible party

I don't think it's a false premise though. It may be if you take your assumption of a perfect world, but I don't really. I don't see anything wrong with getting consumers to find out more about drugs and be the ones to bring them up with their doctors. In fact doctors were bitching for years that consumers are too shy.

Sure, the "fill out this questionnaire and bring it to your doctor to talk" ads/websites are somewhat responsible. The cute girl and a puppy with a voiceover rattling off a litany of horrible side effects TV ads are not.

You'll notice I said "marketing", not "advertising". Most of the budget is *not* spent on ads, it is spent on inviting doctors to luxurious places (all expenses paid) to teach them about their new drugs. That's why you don't hear too much about it.

Most big pharma companies spend roughly twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D. What's your point though? Advertising is how they make the money that pays for the research, what exactly are you suggesting they should do differently?

Someone in the industry told me that it consists of immense up-front investments before a new drug is approved, which may then pay of tenfold in the remaining years until the patent runs out - or turn out to be a complete loss, if the studies are inconclusive or the substance is not safe in humans.

Supposedly it's like playing poker with the company deciding to invest hundreds of millions more or abandon the research they've done so far.

(Which doesn't include the money the company loses on lawsuits if they *

If your business plan consisted of making a series of long-shot bets, wouldn't you want people to know about the one that paid off?

That may sound crass, but think of it this way. A company has 1000 novel active ingredients, 900 of which drop out after spending $10,000 on each, 50 more drop out after spending an additional $100,000 each. 30 more drop out after spending $1,000,000 each, 15 more after further investment of $5,000,000. Then you patent. Then you go to clinical trials. Then you take 5 years

Agreed. And if they didn't spend the money on marketing it isn't like they would spend it on R&D instead. Drug companies all have cash sitting around that they aren't spending on anything, or that they're returning to investors.

There really isn't much innovation in the area of clinical trials, but there is a LOT of cost. That is why there are so few new drugs on the market, and why they are so expensive. It is also why so few serious clinical trials get done in the area of things like supplements, w

That's the problem, in the absence of a ban on advertising, each individual company's decision to advertise is rational, but it's a tragedy of the commons. They'd all be more profitable iff none of them advertised.

Look. Guess who sells vitamin C pills: "Big Pharma"Guess who would make MORE money if Vitamin C worked? "Big Pharma"

You are being influenced by "Big Stupid"

Don't use the term Virii. Moron.

"You'll notice, if you look hard enough they were able to reverse polio in the 50s with this technique that supposedly works on *any* virus."Is, the tecnique is called "Vaccination""Pauling is the only guy that ever got two nobel prizes in t

In the original short story, it was a naturally occurring disease that blew in on the wind.
So the premise for the modern movie probably came about by twisting that into something that played on modern fears.

I know you knew that, but, I just wanted to emphasize the boldface point since Sci-Fi lately has become all about humanity=evil, everything else=good.

If it is a useful protein, the patent will go to whoever owns the lab. The player and discoverer will be quietly shooed away. You'll see a slashdot article titled "foldit player sues lab" in 8 months. Then you'll never hear about it again.

So... you're saying the work of studying proteins for years, coming up with the game idea, creating and distributing the software, is all nothing, in comparison to the guy who downloaded a program and clicked some buttons? I think the notion of "discovery" is pretty fuzzy in a lot of cases, but you're crazy if you think the player deserves MORE credit than the software authors here.

Or the people who synthesize the protein, test that it folds the right way, test it in vitro, test it in animals, perform phase 0, 1, 2 and 3 human trials. You know, the actually finding out if it can be used as a drug. Coming up with a drug candidate is the easy and cheap part of making a new drug.

So... you're saying the work of studying proteins for years, coming up with the game idea, creating and distributing the software, is all nothing, in comparison to the guy who downloaded a program and clicked some buttons? I think the notion of "discovery" is pretty fuzzy in a lot of cases, but you're crazy if you think the player deserves MORE credit than the software authors here.

Or the people who synthesize the protein, test that it folds the right way, test it in vitro, test it in animals, perform phase 0, 1, 2 and 3 human trials. You know, the actually finding out if it can be used as a drug. Coming up with a drug candidate is the easy and cheap part of making a new drug.

The authors developed the game so they could leverage public contributions in a manner that would not have been affordable otherwise. In this equation, you don't only have to take account of the individual successful contribution. The project initiators actually gave a thought to the question raised here:

Foldit project was initiated with the goal of democratizing science, and we stand behind that. the process of discovery and the eventual results of game play will all be open domain.

So... you're saying mathematics, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, the development of the first and all subsequent operating systems leading up to the one used for the game, the development of all programming languages leading up to the development of the language used for the game , is all nothing, in comparison to the work of studying proteins for years, coming up with the game idea, creating and distributing the software? I think the notion of "discovery" is pretty fuzzy in a lot of cases, but you're crazy if you think the software authors deserve MORE credit than the platform developers here.

You didn't twist anything, you just extended further the same point that I made. Of course each of the involved parties deserves some credit. The point is that singling out ONE of them as the sole discoverer makes no sense, especially if you're saying the sole discoverer is the player, the one involved party who did not actually create anything. Giving recognition to the platform developers would probably be unduly difficult, since there are tens of thousands of them, including, say, Von Neumann and Turing.

I think the notion of "discovery" is pretty fuzzy in a lot of cases, but you're crazy if you think the player deserves MORE credit than the software authors here.

Why? The creators of the software developed a tool, and the player used that tool to discover something. We don't give the inventor of the computer credit for discovering fractals, or the inventor of the microscope credit for discovering bacteria, do we?

Granted, the creators of the software deserve great credit for creating a useful tool, just like we separately recognize Galileo for developing the telescope and Herschel for using it to discover Uranus.

I heard about this when it was first announced and cannot believe it still exists/people are still playing this "game"

Anyway this is probably more of a PR smoke then an actual discovery. Drug companies burn through lots of computer time to find potential drug targets most of which do not work. I would expect that a protein (much larger and more complicated then developed drugs) would make the likelihood of its synthesis and folding into the desired structure even less likely to work.

Influenza is a fickle virus, able to alter its hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins very quickly. Although the link is very light on details, it sounds like they're hoping for a hemagglutinin-binding protein. While this would be a "proof of concept" for the usefulness of Foldit, don't hold your breath on this being any sort of flu cure.

FoldIT is not only closed source software, but also closed as an application. It's the best application to remodel and fix up protein structures out there; yet it is not available to use it on your own protein structures.

The groups behind it are research groups and of course with it being their own 'product' they are not forced to sell it or give it away, but they are still sitting on it, although many molecular biologists could benefit from its availability as a professional remodeling tool. When emailing

I played fold.it for a few months a year and half ago. I was better than most at it, but there was one guy who almost always got the best score on every protein he worked on. He was a mutant at it; the Michael Jordan of protein folding. I joked that it was like The Last Starfighter [imdb.com] , he was being selected for being taken off planet by the aliens who developed the game. He had a way of identifying parts of a protein that could be modified to improve it. By studying people like him...on what they see that nobody else does, can lead to improved automated algorithms, which can lead to significant improvements in medicines.

Finding optimal folds of proteins is an NP-Hard [wikipedia.org] problem [springerlink.com], so having any heuristic algorithm improvements can vastly increase the chance of having automated tools find useful folds in reasonable amounts of time.

If you don't want to play the game but do want to help protein research then there are a couple of ways you can donate some of your unused computer time to researchers in this field. The newest way about to come on-line is a project by Dr. Charlie Strauss at Los Alamos National Lab. He is in the process of setting up a distributed grid of volunteer computers from folks who want to donate cycles on their (intel) mac computers to protein design. It's not online yet but you already have the software instal

The funniest part is people assuming this will end up being a cure. Big Pharma has no interest in cures, just mildly effective maintenance drugs one has to keep purchasing in perpetuity.

Put down the bong and learn a little about how the real world works. Big Pharma only has a very limited monopoly on selling drugs. If and when the FDA finally approves it, they've only got maybe a decade and a bit left on the patent to make as much money as possible before dozens of generics in Third World countries start

... they've only got maybe a decade and a bit left on the patent to make as much money as possible... How much more do you think a cure for influenza is worth than a "mildly effective maintenance drug"

Additionally: Curing a diseased person means there's a disease-prone person able to earn money and buy their other products for decades to come - and a doctor who knows they sell stuff that works well.

Also, for your stupid conspiracy to be true, it would mean the people running Big Pharma are very kind people.

Here is why:If you are a CEO and you find a cure. You're stocl goes up and yopu make a huge money. You also prevent other companies from making money from a treatment. So there stock goes down.Again, you win.

To suppress a cure, that mean you are putting it aside for the next CEO in exchange for a marginal bonus and a nominal, if any, stock cha

You need an infinite number of monkeys typing to ensure that one of them produces the complete works of Shakespeare.

If you have an infinite number of monkeys typing, then you'll get an infinite number of monkeys producing the complete works of Shakespear, not just one.
If you make the effort, you can actually calculate the number of monkeys required to have a certain probability of getting at least one monkey to produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Each additional monkey will add to the probability of success.

Nope - the chance of one monkey writing the complete works of Shakespeare is very very small (no. of different characters used in Shakespeare to the power of actual no. of characters used), but it is a chance, and a real number, and therefore it is not truly infinitesimal. If something can be measured, it is not infinitesimal. Infinity * Something very very small = Infinity.

With the number of people contributing to Folding@Home etc I would have thought that something like this would have happened long ago.

Folding@Home is simulating the process of protein folding, not trying to guess the final structure. In fact, the F@H researchers already know the final structure - that's why they chose those proteins, because they're well-studied and experimentally tractable. FoldIt, on the other hand, isn't trying to present a physically accurate depiction of the process, it's just a way